CULTURE – STATE OF DENIAL

Weekend Australian
All-round Country Edition
November 4, 2006 Saturday

A FRENCH law adopted last month that makes it a crime to deny
an Armenian genocide took place in Turkey during World War I has
been criticised by freedom-of-speech supporters in Europe. The law,
which still has to pass the Senate, has also been linked to Turkey’s
application to join the European Union. According to the Financial
Times Deutschland, a report due out next week is expected to give
Turkey low marks for democratic reforms and delay EU accession.

That the law was similar to Turkey’s repression of recognition of
the genocide was not lost on the Turkish media. The daily Hurriyet
headlined its story on the law "Liberte, egalite, stupidite".

"Wonder of wonders, France, the celebrated land of Liberte, having
such a massive hiccup over its Fraternite with the Armenians as
to be ready to discard one of the cardinal pillars of the French
Revolution," complained Karamatullah Ghori in the Turkish Daily
News. Even Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, viewed as a traitor by many
Turks for his recognition of the Armenian genocide, pointed out that
"freedom of expression is a French invention. This law is contrary
to this culture of liberty."

According to Philip Gordon and Omer Taspinar in The New Republic,
the French law was a dangerous step on a slippery slope. "Indeed, the
new French legislation is just the latest illiberal policy in Europe
masquerading as liberalism … Do we really want the Government to
start deciding that some historical views are acceptable but others
merit prison sentences?"

In French weekly Le Point, Bernard-Henri Levy mounted an argument in
favour of the law, saying that "a little dose of political correctness"
was sometimes necessary. He also took issue with the polemic of British
historian Timothy Garton Ash, who wrote in The Guardian that even
Holocaust denial must be allowed in the name of freedom of opinion
and freedom of scientific research.

According to Gwynne Dyer in Arab News the point of the law was never
to get it on the books, as President Jacques Chirac could veto it.

"It was to alienate Turkish public opinion and curry favour with the
half-million French citizens of Armenian descent." The action would
also "provoke a nationalist backlash in Turkey, further damaging the
country’s already fragile relationship with the EU".

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress